Morning Coffee: What it's like when Citadel really wants you. Another JPMorgan expenses case

It's not easy to get a job at hedge fund Citadel. If you apply out of university, you will be up against thousands of other people and there will be an acceptance rate of 0.5% or less. If you apply for a more senior role you might encounter the ghSMART five hour interview scrutinising your childhood. 

If Citadel wants you, though, it will accommodate you. It has accommodated Alexey Poyarkov, whom - as we were first to report last week - it has hired from super-secretive, super-old school, quant trading firm TGS Management Company LLC. 

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TGS is based in Irvine, which is in Orange County, California. Having extracted Poyarkov from the firm, Bloomberg reports that Citadel will have an office in Irvine too. Citadel's own site says that Poyarkov will be leading a new business called GQS SCI, based in Irvine. But Citadel's own map of current office locations shows no office in Irvine. Nor does its most recent ADV form. Poyarkov will seemingly be the start of his very own office. 

Citadel didn't respond to a query on whether this is the case. Unlike rival fund Millennium, which has a multitude of small offices accommodating the needs of experienced portfolio managers, Citadel has historically tended to cluster its employees in a few places (New York, Miami, once upon a time, Chicago). A new office in Orange County looks like a departure from this trend. Citadel also likes to have people actually in its offices, so Poyarkov is unlikely to be working from his garden shed. 

There are two reasons why Citadel would have opened a new Irvine office for Poyarkov. One is that he is so very talented that Citadel would have done anything to hire him. This is possible: as Citadel itself notes, Poyarkov is a "two-time math Olympiad gold medallist." When TGS hired Poyarkov in 2016, the Wall Street Journal reported that he was subject to a bidding war and that despite the fact that he had no previous finance experience, he was told he could earn $700k in his first year there. Ten years later, Poyarkov is presumably able to name his price, and his location.

The second reason Citadel would have opened an office in Irvine is that Irvine is where TGS's other people are based. Bloomberg says Poyarkov will be expanding Citadel's quantitative investment organisation and running a new team based on systematic trading of global equities. This team will be hiring people from AI labs. Maybe it will be hiring other people from TGS too?

Separately, a few months ago there was a FINRA arbitration in which a JPMorgan broker (Brent Ryan Bodner) spent $642 on a deli platter to share with a client and was fired because JPMorgan thought he was eating the platter himself. Bodner contested this and was awarded $4.2m in damages. 

Now another JPMorgan employee claims that he has been targeted as the result of an expenses case. In court filings, Brian Larson, a senior associate at the bank in the US, reportedly says JPMorgan queried his expenses of $40 for two Uber rides and that he was subsequently let go even though his JPMorgan manager had approved the expenses.

Larson's Uber rides were to Pride events, which he says he was attending with JPMorgan's approval. Now he's suing JPMorgan and claiming he was discriminated against on the grounds of his sexual orientation. JPMorgan says it conducted a "thorough internal investigation we found no evidence to substantiate Mr. Larson’s claims.” Larson was on a short-term programme which didn't guarantee a full-time role, said the bank. 

A source at the bank told the Independent there were "gaps" in Larson's performance. Nonetheless, expenses claims at JPMorgan appear to be a risky business. 

Meanwhile...

Citadel re-recruited Matt Giannini to hire people for its equities business. (Business Insider) 

“We've seen growing interest from large marketmakers and hedge funds to recycle risks from autocallable issuers. That was practically non-existent two years ago and it’s now helping free capacity on the dealer side and allow the overall supply of structured products to grow.” Citadel Securities, Jane Street, Millennium Management and Optiver have moved into this business. (IFR) 

People are starting to wonder about AI-related IPOs. SB Energy and Nscale, two data centre builders preparing for initial public offerings in New York are pursuing valuations of $50bn and $35bn respectively. But they have revenues of less than $140m. (FT) 

At least 10 senior bankers at ANZ Group Holdings are leaving the firm by October as Nuno Matos continues to overhaul the business. (Straits Times) 

Polymarket allows you to bet on whether banks like JPMorgan will fail. The FDIC isn't sure about this. (Bloomberg) 

Kelvin Chiu, founder of SilverCape Investments in Singapore, likes to hire talented traders who don't fit into traditional multi-strategy or hedge fund models. He finds them on social media and Substack. (Bloomberg) 

Joseph Baratta, the head of private equity at Blackstone, is leaving the firm aged 55. This is seemingly because Jon Gray (56) is expected to become the next CEO. (WSJ) 

It sounds easy to get a graduate financial services job in Japan. (Bloomberg) 

EY has designed simulations to let junior staff practice asking clients for information or confronting a co-worker about a missed deadline. This is to compensate for the fact that AI now does this and juniors need practice. (WSJ) 

Ben Rosen was an analyst at Morgan Stanley when he foresaw the growth of the personal computer in 1979. At conferences, he liked to balance chairs on his chin. (WSJ) 

My husband never stops working. Should I leave him? (Guardian) 

“I’ve had men crying in my office who are desperate for jobs. They have put three kids through private school, often have large mortgages and they aren’t ready to give up on their careers. But no one will hire them.” (The Times) 

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